THE LAST Abdullah

Despite the surface calm, Kashmir is back on the agenda thanks to Barack Obama's visit in early November. Are Delhi and Omar Abdullah ready?

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Ravi Shankar

October 18, 2010

ISSUE DATE: October 18, 2010

UPDATED: October 18, 2010 00:00 IST

Omar Abdullah's drawing room reflects the sophistication of an upper class Indian, secure in his taste and pedigree. Deep sofas upholstered in gingham cotton, Paresh Maity's art on the walls, Tibetan thangkas, a crystal vase filled with green apples, Chinese bowls delicately painted over with cherry blossom and dragons. The only references to Kashmir are sepia photographs of the city in the late 19th century; the serenity that was once Kashmir, revealed in the calm waters of a clean, wide Chenab while the pagoda of the Jama Masjid rises into the clear sky like the symbol of a balmy past. Pictures of Omar's wife Payal and two sons hold place of pride, but those of his father and grandfather are noticeably missing. An Apple Macintosh sits on a desk by the window. This is neither a local ethnic environment nor a political powerbroker's den.

"I love skiing in Gulmarg, or I go diving,"? says Omar Abdullah, the lonely Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. "But my only hobby now is to try to stay alive..."? He adds hastily, "Both politically and otherwise."?

It was October 2, and there was no curfew in Srinagar. Yet the streets were largely empty, except for a few shoppers scurrying home with the evening's hasty purchases. What is open is a new contempt for Omar, the man who symbolised hope only 20 months ago when he was sworn-in. In the old city, as well as Gurez, Kokernag, Uri, Doru or Shopian, there is a conviction that Omar has squandered his goodwill and credibility. Kashmir's streets may be enjoying a surface calm, but the issue is back to centrestage thanks to Barack Obama's visit in early November. The US State Department sent two of its staff, Kailash Nath and Pushpinder Dhillon, to gauge the popular mood in the valley.

People's Democratic Party (PDP) President Mehbooba Mufti Sayeed accuses Omar of "frittering away the hope of January 2009"? and explains the isolation. "When you demonise a protest as prepaid stone throwing, it is a recipe for disaster. He has turned every house into a jail,"? she says. She is partisan, of course, but not unnecessarily inaccurate. She emphasises the point that Omar let things drift after his mandate and did not address the Kashmiri anguish over the Jammu blockade of the valley. On May 26, 2008, New Delhi and Srinagar agreed to transfer 99 acres of forest land to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board at Baltal in the main Valley for temporary shelters and facilities for pilgrims. Protests broke out and in Srinagar six died and more than 100 were injured in police firing. On July 1, 2008, a shaken state government revoked the decision to transfer the land. As a reaction, Hindus in Jammu went on the rampage, asking for cancellation of the decision. In June, for 61 days, the BJP-led Amarnath Shrine Sangharsh Samiti workers blocked the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway and the 400-km Jammu-Pathankot Highway, the lifeline of Kashmir Valley. This caused a food, fuel and medicine crisis in the Valley. No meat or fowl was available for the 'wazwaan' feasts and many a weddings were cancelled. Exports of handicrafts, carpets and shawls were hit, causing losses worth around Rs 3,000 crore. Fruit rotted and growers lost Rs 100 crore that season. Though the Centre made a deal with the Hindus, Kashmiri pride was seriously wounded. But, Omar did not try to assuage the simmering hurt, a major reason why Kashmiris hate him and do not think of him as one of their own. "He got a Rs 2,400-crore relief package for the state. He only had to build on it,"? is Mehbooba's opinion.

Mohammed Yousuf Tarigami, mla from Nathpura and the state's only Left representative, says much the same thing. "The blockade communalised and polarised the agitation,"? he says. "It was actually an opportunity for Omar to win Kashmir's confidence. But he missed it."? Tarigami says that Kashmir is a land of missed opportunities. The agitation for azadi, over the years has had different meanings at different times. Today, it only means one thing-azadi from the Abdullahs.

The chief minister let the administration slide, entrusting governance to a few trusted advisers while he spent most of his time in Delhi, or holidaying with his family. When two civilians died in army firing at Bomai in February 2009, Mehbooba says, Omar was away skiing with his family in Gulmarg. The governor tried to speak to him on the phone, but Omar couldn't be reached. When asked why he did not bother to visit and handle the situation directly, Omar's reply, according to Mehbooba, was that he will deal with it from Gulmarg. She venomously accuses him of trying to get her lynched by party goons on her Shopian visit in June when unrest broke out after two women went missing and their bodies were found in a canal later. But the sophisticated Omar, who loves Salvatore Ferragamo shoes and Panerai watches, in all innocence presumed that conciliatory gestures were enough if he met the agitationists' demand for the Bomai police camp to be removed and action be taken against cops involved in putting down the Shopian agitation. Little did he know his enemy. His capitulation only encouraged the azadi-seekers to ask for more. It also demoralised the police. Tarigami agrees that it was "a knee-jerk reaction"?. But this cannot be compared to the present removal of bunkers in Srinagar. In 2009, the atmosphere was tense in Bomai which is a terrorist-infested area. Mehbooba is scathing about Omar's callowness. "Politics is simply not his lifestyle, he is happy in Delhi eating out and partying,"? she scoffs. "The chief minister's is a 24/7 job."? So then, is he going to be the last Abdullah? "You can't tell in politics,"? former chief minister and home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's daughter says. "But the present oppression will end Omar's legitimacy in Kashmir forever,"? she adds.

On the sunny verandah of his Gupkar Road home, with a lonely mynah pecking at the grass rimmed by flowerbeds, Omar smiles ruefully. "Right now, I'm everyone's favourite whipping boy,"? he says. "So be it."?

Statistics support his critics. The past months of unrest, according to the state police, have seen 1,046 incidents of violence, 90 protester deaths and 525 injured, one policeman dead and 3,147 injured and, 2,682 arrests. Not surprisingly, the hatred in Kashmir against the state and the Centre is intense. Omar says he always knew "this huge bubble had to burst,"? and he wouldn't have been able to live up to the hype. "The recent crisis has brought down expectations so low that whatever I do will be seen as a silver lining."?

Omar and the Central Government are to blame for the plight of Kashmir today,"? accuses Mohammed Harun Beg, 21, from Kahkashan Chinkipora in Sopore. Beg removes his bandages and shows the holes that the police's rubber bullets have torn in his legs and behind. "The answer to stones cannot be bullets," he says. Asked if stoning is the correct response, Srinagar resident Mohammed Iqbal says, the youth are forced to pick up stones. Are they getting paid for it? Iqbal laughs. "Do you think we will kill ourselves for Rs 300?"? "Omar is a servant of India,"? says Aijaz Khan, who lives in Baramullah, "What can one expect from him but bullets? India is the murderer, lawyer and judge."

Khan's judgment on India may be an exaggeration rising out of anger and frustration, but Kashmir has judged its chief minister and found him wanting, especially when compared to his grandfather and charismatic father. If Sheikh Abdullah, Sher-e-Kashmir, towered over Kashmir both physically (he was 6 ft 4"? tall) and metaphorically, his son, the 6 ft-plus tall Farooq Abdullah was a natural leader of the people. Omar is inept and aloof.

"When Farooq was the chief minister, he had a great time partying, singing songs and piloting a motorbike at high speed around Dal Lake with Shabana Azmi riding pillion, but governance was very good in the state,"? says an old Farooq confidant. But between chief secretary Ashok Jaitley, principal secretary B.R. Singh and director general of police Gurbachan Jagat (now Manipur governor), Kashmir had an efficient administration. "Today, does anyone even know who the chief secretary of Kashmir is?"? he asks.

Farooq, like Omar, became chief minister by the virtue of being his father's son. But when he was the boss, Farooq loved to be surrounded by people-petitioners, party men, petty bureaucrats with requests, party workers and ordinary people who simply wanted to see him. So did Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and even the taciturn Ghulam Nabi Azad. Farooq's old school buddy and one-time adviser to Rajiv Gandhi, Vijay Dhar, has a favourite Farooq story. While driving to a village a little away from Srinagar sometime in the 80s, Dhar and Farooq were stopped by an old Kashmiri. Dhar wanted to continue, but Farooq insisted that they stop. "My father always used to stop to meet him,"? he said, embracing the man and dragging a reluctant Dhar to his house for salty tea and rotis. There, people were waiting with appeals and petitions, which the old man instructed be given to Farooq. Sheikh Abdullah's son took them all and promised to get everything done. He may not have solved each problem, but he lived with his people.

Unlike Farooq, whose five terms in power are widely regarded as the most corrupt administrations Kashmir has ever seen, Omar is personally considered clean. But no one talks about that in Srinagar. Honesty, like the flawless carpets in his living room is irrelevant in the broken streets of the city. "The chief minister doesn't even go to weddings. He doesn't relate to anyone here,"? says a NC leader. Wedding season is political season in Kashmir, where leaders meet in each other's houses or homes of relatives where political deals are made and promises brokered.

Omar Abdullah's arch-enemy and the patriarch of militancy in Kashmir, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, sensed this drift early. "The Abdullah dynasty has deceived the Kashmiri people since 1938 when they changed the name of the Muslim Conference to National Conference (NC) to be close to the Nehru dynasty,"? he says. "Omar should have resigned after Bomai and Shopian happened. He says his heart is broken into 120 pieces. Then how is he alive?"? Geelani believes the Abdullahs have lost popular faith and are finished in the state. The NC, too, is demoralised and is afraid of extinction. Intelligence sources say many of its cadres are involved in stone pelting. Omar has few friends in the party, including his father who had believed he would be the chief minister in 2010. Within the paralysed NC, a silent challenge to the Abdullahs is rising in spite of Omar dismissing it as "mere rumours"?. Young leaders like Abdul Rahim Rather, Chaudhry Mohammad Ramzan, Sakina Itoo are leaders who are not dependent on the fading Adbullah mystique for mass support. Surjit Singh Slathia, one of Omar's ministers and MLA from Jammu, accuses the PDP of spreading a canard that the NC is over in Kashmir. "The 2008 blockade didn't matter,"? he defends his chief minister. "I polled 25,000 votes in Vijaypur."? But a senior NC politician says that Jammu is not Kashmir, which is NC's traditional base. He admits that the party is looking for a change, too. "If Omar stays it will be the end of the NC,"? he says. "And the end of the Abdullahs, too."?

Today, the chief minister is trying to salvage things. His first task is to bring peace back to the streets of Kashmir. Urged by the Centre, Omar has reshuffled his administration. He replaced his Principal Secretary Khurshid Ganai with Bharat Vyas, who had acquired a level of high responsiveness, competence and coordination. The introverted Principal Secretary (Home), Samuel Verghese, had to make way for the young and dynamic B.R. Sharma. Previous Inspector General of Police, Kashmir, S.M.Sahai was reinstated in his old job. Home Ministry sources credit Sahai for breaking the backbone of the Hizbul Mujahedeen. The biggest enemy of the Government and the new team is Geelani, the 81-year-old Jamaat-e-Islami and Hurriyat leader behind the hartals. Geelani's power lies in his control over Kashmiri youth. Previously, in the months that followed the Shopian-inspired street-war, the police used to respond to escalating protest with massive deployment. This would inflame rioters. Stones were met with police bullets. The death toll mounted. Omar's political advisers asked him to apply the healing touch by cracking down on the police. Policemen, including superintendents of police, were arrested and thrown in jail, some on charges of murder. Sahai challenged Geelani's strike calendar. The Hurriyat leader's hartals would be met with indefinite curfew. The curfew-the longest ever in Kashmir-threatened to extend into an unknown future. Both Srinagar's and Geelani's patience began to wear thin. Along with Operation Curfew, Omar's Government played the education card against Geelani. No classes had been held for four months. CBSE exams were approaching. The Government declared its intention to open schools and give police protection. Geelani wasn't beaten yet. He ordered the stoning to continue.

"My school buses were stoned,"? says Vijay Dhar, who owns DPS School, Srinagar. "Thirteen children were hurt. I decided to shut the school. But parents insisted the school buses run."? Asked why his boys were stoning school buses, Geelani absurdly replies that it was done in self-defence.

The Centre is certain that if violence occurs in Kashmir during Obama's India visit in November, it will embarrass India globally. There are whispers that the Congress would prefer Raheem Rather, Kashmir's finance minister as the next chief minister. They believe that choosing Rather, whom Mehbooba says was "elected on his own right rather than because he belonged to the NC,"? would send a message to Kashmiri youth and its leaders that Omar no longer has India's faith.

The prints on Omar's walls tell of a past as peace with itself. There is little sign of the future on his face. n

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